Demo 2012

With the simple title “Demo 2012”, Kvalm decided to take part in the big discography of France. This simplicity continues in the black and white, minimalistic and dark cover and it ends up in the titles of the tracks. The demo contains five compositions and two ambient dark introductions of about half an hour of duration. Musically the listener expects to listen to simple, straightforward, raw Black Metal, something that doesn’t exist, at least in every aspect of the album.

There is no doubt that Kvalm are influenced by the raw and extreme Black Metal of the early ‘90ies but without staying only there. In the demo we will find influences by the old, elitist, French sound but also by newer extreme genres. The riffs and the rhythm have many changes, from stormy, fast and chaotic down to slow, torturing, while the ambient elementς appear in the entire album. All this could have been quite interesting but unfortunately in this album it is boring and with no meaning. The riffs are the only responsible for that because they are tedious and not even a little interesting. Another big problem of this album is the production. The sound is so dirty, without any depth that many times the instruments aren’t audible at all while the mixture almost does not exist as the entire demo remints of a recorded rehearsal. The lyrics are extreme, harsh Black Metal vocals that they are trying to help the composition with the hatred and disgust that they put out but they are monotonous and after the second track they are becoming tedious for the listener. The lyrics are not contained in the tape and I couldn’t understand in which language they are written.

Generally I think that this album is very bad. The riffs haven’t got any inspiration, the sound is bad and the overall result is completely boring. It really makes you wonder if this band needed six years in order to compose and to present us this result. I don’t believe that there is any hope for improvement in a future release because as it seems, here the most important thing for a band is absent, the talent. Avoid.